en عمومى General مقاله اصیل Original Article <p>Background: Forecasting of air pollutants has become a popular topic of environmental research today. For this purpose, the artificial neural network (AAN) technique is widely used as a reliable method for forecasting air pollutants in urban areas. On the other hand, the evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) model has recently been used as a forecasting tool in some environmental issues. In this research, we compared the ability of these models to forecast carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations in the urban area of Tabriz city. Methods: The dataset of CO concentrations measured at the fixed stations operated by the East Azerbaijan Environmental Office along with meteorological data obtained from the East Azerbaijan Meteorological Bureau from March 2007 to March 2013, were used as input for the ANN and EPR models. Results: Based on the results, the performance of ANN is more reliable in comparison with EPR. Using the ANN model, the correlation coefficient values at all monitoring stations were calculated above 0.85. Conversely, the R2 values for these stations were obtained <0.41 using the EPR model. Conclusion: The EPR model could not overcome the nonlinearities of input data. However, the ANN model displayed more accurate results compared to the EPR. Hence, the ANN models are robust tools for predicting air pollutant concentrations.</p> Forecasting, ANN, EPR, Carbon monoxide, Modeling 117 122 http://ehemj.com/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-21&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Mohammad Shakerkhatibi shakerkhatibim@tbzmed.ac.ir 10031947532846001962 10031947532846001962 Yes Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Health, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran Nahideh Mohammadi 10031947532846001963 10031947532846001963 No Student Research Committee, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran Khaled Zoroufchi Benis 10031947532846001964 10031947532846001964 No Environmental Engineering Research Center, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran Alireza Behrooz Sarand 10031947532846001965 10031947532846001965 No Department of Chemical Engineering, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran Esmaeil Fatehifar 10031947532846001966 10031947532846001966 No Environmental Engineering Research Center, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran Ahmad Asl Hashemi 10031947532846001967 10031947532846001967 No Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Health, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran